Join the teachers union if you don’t want the government sticking needles in your arm

One of the latest orders from the Maskachusetts governor is that children will be denied a K-12 education if they don’t submit to a flu vaccination. (In ancient times, of course, this could be conveniently obtained at the school itself in about 30 seconds, from a public health nurse with a gun, but today this will involve more than 20 minutes of paperwork at a CVS or similar.)

So everyone in the school building will have a reduced chance of getting the flu? There was a discussion about this on the town mailing list. The righteous who attended a School Committee meeting reported that the bureaucrats concluded that they lacked the power to force the teachers to accept the needle.

(How effective is the flu vaccine? Not effective enough for the British medical technocrats to recommend it for those between 11 and 65 years of age (Oxford; NHS), perhaps partly because “Over time, protection from the injected flu vaccine gradually decreases and flu strains often change.” (NHS). If the Brits are correct, perhaps the current American zeal for flu shots will lead to a lot of flu deaths among the elderly 10-20 years from now. See “Repeated flu shots may blunt effectiveness” (CMAJ, 2015))

In other coronaplague news, the town decided not to defer construction of what seems to be, on a per-student basis, the most expensive school ever built in the United States. They started demolishing the old building in June, as planned. Instead of the old building plus the temporary trailers, therefore, the school will try to operate within half of the old building and the trailers. In other words, they affirmatively decided to reduce the square footage per student in the middle of a raging viral epidemic.

Related:

  • “Brazil’s Bolsonaro says COVID-19 vaccinations will not be mandatory” (Reuters): “Many people want the vaccine to be applied in a coercive way, but there is no law that provides for that,” Bolsonaro said in a Facebook live chat with his supporters. … “There is no way for the government – unless we live in a dictatorship – to force everyone to get vaccinated,” Mourão said in a radio interview.

5 thoughts on “Join the teachers union if you don’t want the government sticking needles in your arm

  1. My dealings with the NHS indicate a much simpler decision process. They take the expected efficacy of the vaccine (20-50% for common influenza), times the cost of treating the person times the expected level of influenza in the public. If the net savings exceed the cost of the vaccine, the NHS recommends it. If not, they don’t.

    It’s not surprising for them to decide not to cover ages 11 to 65. For almost all of these patients, the policy for treating the flu is:
    “You have the flu. Sucks to be you. Stay home from work. Call us if you are dieing.”

    That’s a really low cost treatment. For the over 65, the likely costs of treating the flu are higher because the disease hits them harder and they are physically weaker. So the same logic about reducing the costs by 20-50% leads to an recommendation of vaccination.

    The efficacy concerns about regular annual vaccination are worth scientific study. As the studies say, they have insufficient data to make meaningful statements. They have enough data to justify more studies. The efficacy numbers for the vaccine vary wildly from season to season, ranging from 20% to 50%. With an underlying variability this large, it’s hard to get enough good data. That also means that for now it’s reasonable to ignore this possibly coincidental variation.

    As for the amateur Hitler wanna-bes in politics, I’m disappointed that they don’t like the truly democratic process of informing the public and letting them each decide for themselves.

    The nominal R0 of annual influenza is highly variable, with a mean of 1.4. The more serious influenza outbreaks have had an R0 of 2.0 to 2.5. This means that population vaccination for influenza is not a epidemic control factor. The percent immunized (US typical 45%) and low efficacy mean that R0 will be reduced by only 0.1-0.2. Vaccination a cost control decision. Given the similarity of symptoms between covid-19 and influenza, there is a good cost control argument to include the cost of ruling out covid-19 as part of the cost of treating influenza this year.

    What’s wrong with letting individuals decide for themselves? The totalitarian impluse runs strong in those local governments.

    • “You have the flu. Sucks to be you. Stay home from work. Call us if you are dieing.”

      To me this is one of the top few RCA observations about Covid-19. That line summarizes the most common treatment strategy in use in America today. However, with a new viral player in the game that strategy became “call me tomorrow once this turns into a unrecoverable, deadly infection”.

    • > The nominal R0 of annual influenza is highly variable, with a mean of 1.4. The more serious influenza outbreaks have had an R0 of 2.0 to 2.5. This means that population vaccination for influenza is not a epidemic control factor. The percent immunized (US typical 45%) and low efficacy mean that R0 will be reduced by only 0.1-0.2. Vaccination a cost control decision.

      I’m not following your math. If 45% of the population is immunized (obviously there are ways to increase this), and it’s ~40% effective (depending on the strain), that’s an 18% reduction in the R number (R_0 specifically refers to people who haven’t been vaccinated or developed any immunity). So if you start from 1.4, we go down to 1.15 (we could go down to 70% vaccination rate). I’m not sure what model to put that into to get a realistic number out but that seems like a substantial difference. Obviously if we could get the R number below 0, that would be a huge difference.

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